THE BIG ISSUE 4 – 17 JULY 2014 43
coverage is of
journalistic value
is negligible. But in
monetary terms...
The traction Vice
is receiving has already led to Rupert
Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox investing in
Vice Media, and extensive talk of a deal
with Time Warner that could see the
company valued at a cheeky US$2 billion.
Vice co-owner/founder Shane Smith
has spoken openly of his ambition to
expand the company to become the next
CNN. And now the owners of CNN (Time
Warner) appear to want in.
Increasingly, more money and
resources are being committed to
strengthen Vice’s journalistic arm,
sending reporters to cover events
in countries like Iraq, Ukraine and
Venezuela – previously the domain of
mainstream news companies.
One of the pros for Vice and its brand
of reporting is the vastness of the web
itself. Traditional networks require set
schedules made up of hours and half
THE VICE BRAND has come a long way
since starting out as a Montreal-based
magazine in 1994. With a huge global
audience regularly visiting its many
websites, a television series on HBO,
an advertising agency and film
production house, it has a lock on the
young, male demographic.
Theirs is not a conventional approach
to journalism by any stretch, and Vice
has been criticised for its sensationalised,
stunt-heavy style of reporting, as well as
its laddish approach and content. This is
typified by the Vice website section called
Not Safe For Work (NSFW), which posts
stories such as ‘An Expert’s Guide to
Brothel Etiquette’.
In recent times, the most covered
Vice initiative was its February 2013 trip
with former NBA star Dennis Rodman
to North Korea for a little basketball
diplomacy involving Dear Leader Kim
Jong-un. Whether such stunt-centred
hours. When you
have to rush off to
give updates on
headlines, there’s
little time left to
actually get your hands dirty – as regular
Big Issue contributor Hannah Brooks
did in her Vice-screened documentary on
transsexual Muslims in Indonesia.
When presenting online, time is
limitless. A story doesn’t have to be sliced
around ad breaks; it can be as long or as
short as the creator deems worthy.
While some might be happy to peddle
the cliché that young people (whatever
that means) aren’t interested in news and
current affairs, it’s clear through viewing
figures online that they’re just finding it
from different sources.
Add to this the enormous dollar values
being bandied around for all-in-one
news/sport/pop culture providers like
Vice, and it’s clear where the future lies.
by Michael Chamberlin
(@ChamberlinM)
One reason why
sport rates so well on
television is because
it often involves a
cracking good story.
Also, it seems we’re
just hardwired to
love sport.
Maybe that’s
why we’re turning
everything else in
modern life into a sport. Cooking is a
sport. Modelling is a sport. Going to the
airport is a sport. Nature documentaries
are even a sport. “SURVIVAL of the
FITTEST” says the voiceover. Well, not
exactly. Actually it’s two snails minding
their own business on a leaf.
Yet this life-as -competition concept
is fun, isn’t it? What we need to do now
is figure out a way to adapt the sporting
competition format to help address
some of the greatest challenges of our
day. You know: those issues that affect
us on a global scale.
WOW, THAT WORLD Cup business is an
exciting TV series isn’t it? Attractive men
in lurid costumes are paid by mysterious
business figures to play a sport steeped
in history before hyped-up crowds who
haven’t noticed the match is taking place
in a post-apocalyptic shanty town whose
disenfranchised are finally gaining
international attention. Kind of. It’s
Friday Night Lights meets The Wire.
Only it’s a documentary.
Even the least sporty person in the
world gets World Cup fever, or Olympic
fever, or finds themselves accidentally
caring about a story on TV where an
attractive young nobody comes from
nowhere to win in front of a crowd of
thousands – a crowd that includes the
one (attractive) person who always
believed, way back from the start, that
this day would come, and whose tears
twinkle in the sunlight.
MEDIA
TELEVISION
WORLD CUP SPILLETH
JOURNALISM
OUT OF THE VICE
Like, maybe,
Climate Countdown.
Teams of attractive
scientists compete to
win an all-expenses-
paid wedding on
an island by saving
the island and the
planet by the time
the credits roll.
Break for ads.
Or Equalise This! Extremely
attractive people with inspiring life
stories undertake a series of physical
challenges with the world’s richest 1% of
the population, in the Battle for Offshore
Bank Accounts. The program features
a glittering closing ceremony where the
cash is fired out of a cannon into the very
attractive faces of the 99%.
Break for ads.
Or we just watch the sport and see what
happens. I’m going for the underdog.
by Lorin Clarke (@lorinimus)
NAIL-BITING STUFF!
SNAILPHOTOGRAPHBYPATRICKPLEUL/AFP/GETTYIMAGES